We are 'other-conscious' before we are 'self-conscious'.

Streetlight

The ever wonderful Edge website posted a wonderful little article by the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran regarding the neuoscience of self-awareness. In it, Ramachandran argues that evolutionarily, it's probable that we learnt to recognize 'other minds' long before we learned to recognize our own, and that in fact, self-awareness in fact 'piggy-backed' on our ability to recognize others in the first place. In his own words: "I suggest that "other awareness" may have evolved first and then counterintutively, as often happens in evolution, the same ability was exploited to model ones own mind — what one calls self awareness." The full article is a worth a read, and it's only about three or so pages long.

I'm a big fan of this thesis since it fits nicely with the intuitions of phenomenologists who have long recognized that self-awareness is a form of perception no different to the perceiving of things 'outside' of us. Here is Alphonso Lingis, writing from way back in 1986: "[The] experience of my own conscious life... is not the immediate circuit that a pulsation of thought would form with itself, being given inwardly to itself. ... If I can perceive conscious life in my own body, I can also do so in another's body, and my experience of his life will be akin to that of my own." Key for Lingis is the emphasis on proprioception on the hand (the feeling of kinaesthetic sensation) and 'external perception on the other:

"My own body is given to me as consciously alive in two ways. On the one hand, it is given as a sensitive zone - a zone of susceptibility, of representational and affective, and also kinesthetic sensation. For my body as a sensation-field is always for me polarized by vectors of forces, axes of stance and motility, kinesthetically felt: it is by moving my eyes that I see, and by moving my hands that I feel ... On the other hand, my own body is something that I can perceive by external perception: I can see most of it, I can touch one member of it with another, I perceive my body visually, tangibly, audibly, olefactorily. IT is perceived specifically as a sensible object that is alive - and sensitive." He concludes: "Thus the perception of my own body by myself has a reflexive structure; as I perceive it I recognize the movement in it to by synthetically one with the movement with which I perceive it. In such a reflexict perception I perceive life in a body, conscious life governing a body, a recognize myself - my ego-identity - in that body."

For Lingis, this is exactly how we perceive others as well: "The other's conscious life is perceivebale in the form of movements of his sensible body. These movements are perceived as 1) spontaneous, originating in that body itself, and not perceivably transmitted to it from the outside; 2) teleologically relating to certain objects and objects in the world about him, a world I too perceive; and 3) consistent and coherent among themselves ... In perceiving a body that is moving with these kind of movements, I not only seem to be perceiving a body that is moving itself, I also seem to perceive a body that is sensitive to itself. And just like the perception of our own aliveness, "there is a reflexive structure also in my perception of the bodies of others. As I perceive their movements I get a reflexive sense of the sort of representational and affective and kinaesthetic sensations with which those movements are experiences from within; I get a reflexive sense of what one perceives and how one feels affected and how one feels mobile in the course of such movements." (Lingis, The Perception of Others)

In any case, there is no difference in kind between self-awareness and other-awareness. Now, Ramachandran's work is interesting to the extent that not only does it uphold this thesis, it in fact says that we perceive others even before we 'perceive' ourselves as 'having selves'. By stipulating that mirror-neurons are responsible for this fact, Ramachandran actually provides a neurobiological mechanism by which such recognition would takes place: "self awareness is simply using mirror neurons for "looking at myself as if someone else is look at me" (the word "me" encompassing some of my brain processes, as well). The mirror neuron mechanism — the same algorithm — that originally evolved to help you adopt another's point of view was turned inward to look at your own self. This, in essence, is the basis of things like "introspection'."

I think this is cool. Discuss.

Skyferia

[How does the activity of neurons give rise to the sense of being a conscious human being?]
I'll provide my view on this question.

The neurons are interlinked and are activated accordingly by internal (genes, etc.) and external (people, scenarios, etc.). That provides the individual with self-awareness & other-awareness. The variables are nearly endless, so answers are mostly, if not all, opinionated.

The above view can be explained philosophically, but I don't have the right words to elaborate on.

I'd be glad if anyone can object my view reasonably because I am hoping for a better perspective than that.

Terrapin Station

Recognizing others wouldn't be the same thing as recognizing other minds, first off.

One can't observe other minds. One can only observe phenomena that we assume is correlated to other minds.

Aside from that, I don't know how we'd be able to have any idea whether conscious creatures, phylogenetically, would have a concept of others prior to a concept of self. I can't imagine a way that we could do any sort of empirical test for that, a fortiori because we can't even be sure what third-person observable states amount to a first-person conception of self.

Mongrel

It's also appealing because scientists note that humans are distinct from chimps because we look into each others' eyes a lot. In the ongoing quest to figure out why we're different from other animals, that issue has been probed for significance.

The eyes are windows to the soul, after all.

tom

The ever wonderful Edge website posted a wonderful little article by the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran regarding the neuoscience of self-awareness. In it, Ramachandran argues that evolutionarily, it's probable that we learnt to recognize 'other minds' long before we learned to recognize our own, and that in fact, self-awareness in fact 'piggy-backed' on our ability to recognize others in the first place. In his own words: "I suggest that "other awareness" may have evolved first and then counterintutively, as often happens in evolution, the same ability was exploited to model ones own mind — what one calls self awareness." The full article is a worth a read, and it's only about three or so pages long. — StreetlightX

But animals aren't aware of themselves OR any other animal. They do not possess the quale of self-awareness or the quale of other-awareness. Imputing subjectivity to animals is about as scientific as imputing them a soul.

From another perspective, if an animal becomes aware of something - such as the fact that other animals are independent beings - then what law of physics or epistemology prevents it from awareness of anything?

Even those tragic souls who spend their time trying to convince themselves and others that apes and dogs can "talk", have never reported a single question ever being asked. The animals literally are unaware of the existence of the researcher, or themselves.

It is almost irresistible for humans not to see a (crippled, disabled, imprisoned) human-like entity behind a furry face. Thankfully, it is not there!

Baden

But animals aren't aware of themselves OR any other animal. — tom

You can't account for the rich social life of many animals without positing awareness of others. There's also the mirror test, which suggests self-awareness in some higher mammals such as chimpanzees, elephants and maybe even birds.

Even those tragic souls who spend their time trying to convince themselves and others that apes and dogs can "talk", have never reported a single question ever being asked. The animals literally are unaware of the existence of the researcher, or themselves — tom

It doesn't follow from the fact that language is unique (as far as we know) to humans that non-humans cannot be aware of each other.

tom

You can't account for the rich social life of many animals without positing awareness of others. There's also the mirror test, which suggests self-awareness in some higher mammals such as chimpanzees, elephants and maybe even birds. — Baden

Really? This psychologist would certainly disagree:

https://sites.google.com/site/rwbyrnepsychology/publication-downloads

The classic "Byrne, R W (2003) Imitation as behaviour parsing." shows that awareness is not required for learning complex behaviours.

Baden

↪tom

Where does he deal with the results of the mirror test?

Baden

↪StreetlightX

I'm reminded of Vygotsky here and the social development of thought. Our inner life as a result of the gradual internalization of the social world / life of the other. Self-awareness being dependent on a successful assimilation of other-awareness. Ramachandran's ideas seem to plug in nicely to that.

Baden

The classic "Byrne, R W (2003) Imitation as behaviour parsing." shows that awareness is not required for learning complex behaviours. — tom

You made the claim, which I objected to that

"...animals aren't aware of themselves OR any other animal."

and you said:

"The animals literally are unaware of the existence of the researcher, or themselves."

But the paper you cite here in defense of that claim doesn't defend it. Byrne is dealing with the issue of "mentalizing" i.e. attributing intentionality to others not mere awareness of others, and he admits of rudimentary mentalizing capacities in other animals in any case.

Non-human great apes appear to be able to acquire elaborate skills partly by imitation, raising the possibility of the transfer of skill by imitation in animals that have only rudimentary mentalizing capacities: in contrast to the frequent assumption that imitation depends on prior understanding of others’ intentions...

The evolution of the ability to parse the behaviour of others, which on current evidence evolved at least as long ago as the shared ancestors of humans and other great apes around 12 Myr ago, may therefore have been a necessary preliminary to the later development exclusively in humans of the ability to mentalize: to attribute intentions and causes to observed actions. Behaviour parsing may still be part of the everyday process of doing so. — Richard W. Byrne

Don't want to take this off-topic into a debate about animal consciousness. Suffice to say that if you believe animals are not conscious at all, you're unlikely to get anything out of this discussion.

_db

↪StreetlightX

Ernest Becker brought to light in his book The Life and Death of Meaning the psychoanalytic observations of young children. In youth, children develop three separate identities: Me, Mine, and I. Me is the social identity, and the first on the scene. Then comes the property identity, then the third personal ownership identity. The overall point made was that humans inherently have a deep reliance on other people for validation, and this explains why family units can be so strong, or why cultural or national identities are so rigid. These social spheres literally become a part of the ego, and in fact were the first aspect of the ego.

tom

But the paper you cite here in defense of that claim doesn't defend it. Byrne is dealing with the issue of "mentalizing" i.e. attributing intentionality to others not mere awareness of others, and he admits of rudimentary mentalizing capacities in other animals in any case. — Baden

Those rudimentary capacities, which obviously have to exist, do not include intentionality.

Baden

↪tom

Mentalizing, rudimentary or not, necessitates at least some awareness of the other. Agree?

Metaphysician Undercover

Ramachandran argues that evolutionarily, it's probable that we learnt to recognize 'other minds' long before we learned to recognize our own, and that in fact, self-awareness in fact 'piggy-backed' on our ability to recognize others in the first place. — StreetlightX

I find this very agreeable. It is by recognizing that others are living, thinking, beings, that we apprehend the mind as an object which needs to be understood. We then find that we have to reflect back on our own manner of thinking in an attempt to understand why the others are acting the way that they do. This causes self-awareness. In a sense then, self-awareness is the result of reflection, which is carried out as an attempt to understand others.

In any case, there is no difference in kind between self-awareness and other-awareness. Now, Ramachandran's work is interesting to the extent that not only does it uphold this thesis, it in fact says that we perceive others even before we 'perceive' ourselves as 'having selves'. By stipulating that mirror-neurons are responsible for this fact, Ramachandran actually provides a neurobiological mechanism by which such recognition would takes place: "self awareness is simply using mirror neurons for "looking at myself as if someone else is look at me" (the word "me" encompassing some of my brain processes, as well). The mirror neuron mechanism — the same algorithm — that originally evolved to help you adopt another's point of view was turned inward to look at your own self. This, in essence, is the basis of things like "introspection'." — StreetlightX

This, I would not agree with though. I find that reflection, introspection, reveals to us that there are aspects of others which we cannot hope to know, implying inherent differences between us. Self-awareness is caused by looking at myself for the purpose of understanding others. The result of this is the conclusion that there are aspects of others which I cannot possibly understand by looking at myself. Nevertheless, introspection, and self-awareness proceeds, continues, not as a "looking at myself as if someone else is looking at me", it is a recognition of the opposite, that I can look at myself in a way that others cannot possibly do. It exposes a privileged perspective. Because of this, introspection magnifies the difference between self-awareness and other-awareness, it does not dissolve that difference.

tom

↪Baden

No. Was AlphaGo aware of its opponent? No ape could even begin to understand the rules to Go.

All animals have a set of genetically determined behaviour primitives that they are capable of arranging in a variety of ways. They have no idea what they are doing or why. Apes cannot parrot, and parrots can't ape.

Non-human animals do not create knowledge; of themselves, of others, of "what-it's-like", or anything else.

Baden

No. — tom

If you really think this, that mentalizing (in whatever form) does not necessitate at least some awareness of the other (in this case, that an animal can mentalize with regard to another animal without being aware of that other animal), I would say that you're simply wrong. Mentalizing necessitates awareness of the other by definition. If you can't accept that, fine, we'll agree to disagree. As for the rest of your post, the broader issue of animal intentionality is worthy of a separate thread. I'll get involved if you want to start one, but we're somewhat off-topic here.

tom

If you really think this, that mentalizing (in whatever form) does not necessitate at least some awareness of the other (in this case, that an animal can mentalize with regard to another animal without being aware of that other animal), I would say that you're simply wrong. Mentalizing necessitates awareness of the other by definition. If you can't accept that, fine, we'll agree to disagree. As for the rest of your post, the broader issue of animal intentionality is worthy of a separate thread. I'll get involved if you want to start one, but we're somewhat off-topic here. — Baden

The fact that a non-aware machine can defeat the 2nd best human at an incredibly complex game should give you pause for thought.

unenlightened

In youth, children develop three separate identities: Me, Mine, and I. Me is the social identity, and the first on the scene. Then comes the property identity, then the third personal ownership identity. — darthbarracuda

Psyche always demands three dimensions; the observer, the observed, and well, whoever is claiming there is the observer and the observed The analyst).

But in

↪StreetlightX

's terms, the observed is awareness as sensitivity to self in proprioception and related sensations - the feedback between babble and hearing for example. The observer is the mirror neuron modelling process reflected upon those direct senses, and the third is linguistic.

Which is unaccountably missing from the op.

The Great Whatever

One of the disasters of phenomenology was making intentionality foundational, and so failing to see how anyone could relate to themselves on any model except for the way they relate to an object. Therefore the system leaves no room for self-consciousness as anything other than a form of reflexivity. Consciousness goes outward first, and so must loop back around on itself, like an eye displacing itself and then looking backward. These are powerful metaphors so deeply ingrained that they're IMO impossible to dissuade people of once they have a certain temperament. With these prejudices in place, of course you're going to end up thinking the outside is more fundamental.

This is part of the legacy of Western philosophy known as ontological monism, which takes the transcendent and distance as fundamental, which Michel Henry criticizes. I think it's backwards: you can get to exteriority from auto-affection, but not vice-versa. If you begin with the outside, you only get a sad facsimile of the self, as 'another inside of me.' That is what is fashionable in philosophy now, but it'd be a nice to see a return to the other direction, which was championed by the Cyrenaics and Descartes. The picture we have of the competing view is a sort of 'mutual emptiness' that Schopenhauer criticizes when he asks: 'this is all very well and good, but what the devil has any of it got to do with me?'

I'm passionate about this topic because I think unlike many things in philosophy it matters, and is going firmly in the wrong direction, away from life as lived and toward an abstraction of it. And once this abstraction is loved for its own sake, it takes a lot of hard work to get back to something interesting.

As for the thesis about consciousness of others here, it doesn't even do what it wants of course, because it also sees other people as things. And so just like we have a facsimile of the self, we have a facsimile of other people. Lingis' description, what we see of it here anyway, is bloodless and facile, and does not at all capture what experiencing another person is like.

Barry Etheridge

Non-human animals do not create knowledge; of themselves, of others, of "what-it's-like", or anything else. — tom

This is clearly something that you need to believe for reasons no doubt far beyond my understanding but it simply isn't supported by any rational investigation of animal behaviour. How do you even begin to explain the odd couple bonds between animals of different species, not infrequently between predator and prey, mourning and depression. fostering and community care, recognition of specific animals and humans after extended periods of separation, and a whole host of other complex social interactions if there is no awareness of self and other at all?

Metaphysician Undercover

I think it's backwards: you can get to exteriority from auto-affection, but not vice-versa. If you begin with the outside, you only get a sad facsimile of the self, as 'another inside of me.' — The Great Whatever

The problem is, that awareness is prior to self-awareness, and to be aware is to have a particular type of relationship with your surroundings. All living things derive their means for subsistence from their environment, so awareness of the surroundings is developed from the necessity of subsistence. There is no such necessity to drive the evolution of the awareness of an inner self.

The Great Whatever

The problem is, that awareness is prior to self-awareness — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think there is any such thing as awareness that's not self-awareness. All feeling is feeling of oneself, of the movements of one's own body.

All living things derive their means for subsistence from their environment, so awareness of the surroundings is developed from the necessity of subsistence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes and no. The frog need not be aware of anything external to survive: it only needs to respond to certain motivating passions in ways that have evolved accidentally to result in an unintended external effect of which it's unaware and can't understand. Any tiny miscalibration here will result in it dying, and it will be unable to appeal to what is around it to save itself, because it doesn't/can't understand.

Janus

↪Metaphysician Undercover

No prior awareness of the hunger of the self for subsistence then?

BC

I think awareness can exist without self-awareness.

The frog's eye receives photons; the cornea transmits signals to the frog's brain; the signals are processed and a moving object is detected and minimally characterized; instructions are sent. The mouth opens, the tongue is advanced according to the brain's instruction. The frog catches a fly. The tongue retracts; the fly is swallowed; repeat.

It's really very complicated, but what doesn't happen (as far as we know) is that the frog is aware of its achievements in fly catching. The frog's senses also track threats, and the frog moves, or doesn't move, accordingly -- as directed by instinct. Presumably the frog feels almost nothing--no fear; no pride; no boredom; no etcetera. It doesn't have a lot of brain, and if there is the ability to respond chemically to threat (a spurt of cortisol) the frog doesn't have to process the experience.

For a frog, minimal awareness definitely seems to require no development of frog-self-awareness. Frogs are a successful organism without 'consciousness'. (I'm assuming that self-awareness and consciousness are pretty closely related.)

It is less believable (to me, anyway) that an intelligent dog operates the same way a frog does. Dogs have much more brain with which to perceive, process, and evaluate. They interact on some level with other dogs and humans in such a way as to suggest that they have limited self-awareness, limited consciousness. Maybe not much, but some.

New borns? Infants? A normal baby will develop extensive self-awareness; I'm thinking this starts from scratch. The new borne suckling from its mother's breast doesn't need self-awareness, initially. But soon it starts to distinguish between me/not me. Two year olds are terrible because by that age (before, often) they have divined that they not only exist, but as beings have a fair amount of power. They can say "no" to everything, for instance. The little bastard tyrant has come into his own.

tom

↪Baden

A robot can be programmed to pass the mirror test.

tom

Mentalizing, rudimentary or not, necessitates at least some awareness of the other. Agree? — Baden

You could argue that this robot is aware:

After all, if it was not aware of itself and the environment, then how could it possibly do what it does? Someone might even claim the robot is conscious, which I might accept for the sake of argument. However, if you claim that the robot possesses subjectivity, that there is a "what it is like" to be that robot, that it can suffer, I would disagree.

Animals are exquisitely evolved robots.

Janus

↪tom

Not something that could ever be empirically confirmed. So what do your instincts tell you? Do they tell you it doesn't matter if you torture animals, because they don't suffer in the slightest? If they do tell you that then I feel sorry for you that you either have no sense of empathy or have fallen for an ugly load of bullshit to the degree that your belief overrides your capacity for fellow feeling.

tom

↪John

I thought this was a philosophy forum where people are motivated by something other than instinct?

When animals create knowledge and in particular when they transfer this knowledge by creating cultural artefacts, then there will be no explanation for that phenomenon other than they possess qualia. Same goes for robots.

Is "empirical confirmation" ever possible? What do your instincts tell you?

The Great Whatever

After all, if it was not aware of itself and the environment, then how could it possibly do what it does? — tom

If a rock was not aware of its environment, how could it possibly do what it does?

tom

↪The Great Whatever

Yes, I have encountered that opinion and worse. While I could accept, for the sake of argument, that robots are "aware", I am not prepared to surrender to panpsychism.

Baden

↪tom

As I mentioned earlier, if you want to bang your drum on the broad issue of animal consciouness, fine, I'll get involved. But start a new thread.

We are 'other-conscious' before we are 'self-conscious'.

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